This blog's title is based upon the best question I ever overheard being asked, by a young Liverpudlian child to his mother, as in "What's..?".
The answer seems to be something of a creative and cultural nature which, in deed (primarily the making of art) and word, this blog intends to explore...

Friday, April 05, 2013

World Cup '74 #18 (Adrian Alston)

graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm

Whilst it would be disingenuous indeed to claim that the hauntologically-inclined World Cup ’74 drawing project was continuing apace, progress it does, albeit more slowly than desired but rather in keeping with what has become the norm at TOoT.

As will be the case for all of the represented members of the Australian squad, the rather fabulous FKS-published collectors’ stamp album ‘Wonderful World of Soccer Stars World Cup 1974’ provides the original source image-object from which the drawing is subsequently processed (& for a scan of the thing itself, in situ, please refer to the image below).
From what is the infinite scope of possible configurations of toned graphite squares within the basic matrix, the portrait subject in this instance, simultaneously emerging from & subsumed within is
Adrian Alston, who cuts a somewhat ambiguous figure in that I do recall his name, but only from post-World Cup, when he signed to play for Luton Town during the 1974-75 season when the club enjoyed a brief moment in the Division One spotlight, as indeed he did himself (subsequently, & as Luton suffered relegation, Alston also transferred out of the top flight to the then, since & now even more so appalling Cardiff City).
As a result of this mode of recollection, Alston is represented ‘only’ in monochrome rather than the colour treatment that names specifically remembered from the televised coverage of the tournament are/will be.